


for those in peril on the sea

by edgehog



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon Era, F/F, F/M, Hamburr, M/M, Mermaids, Mermen, Multi, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-01-26 02:38:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12546952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edgehog/pseuds/edgehog
Summary: We all get hungry for the forbidden now and then.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We all get hungry for the forbidden now and then.

Burr is not sure he hears it at all - that sound somehow both faint and large. Like a whale, he thinks: except that whales are noisy as hell, always chattering and splashing and blowing air.

Not a whale, then. Something that moved like a whale - something big, and heavy, and slow.

He’s still thinking of it when he goes up into the little caves, where the tides come in so high and ebb away so fast, they leave fish stranded.

Sometimes other things are stranded too, and then he feasts.

But fish are good enough.

There isan _other thing_ in the caves today, a small one; it’s barely holding on to the tip of a rock while the water moves and churns around it. Fast water here, and unpredictible.

The sound of water almost covers up the echoing wails - first, from loneliness and worry - then fear - and then silence.

Burr sits on the rock afterwards and cleans his teeth.

 

And that’s where he is when the ocean drains away, the level dropping too low too fast, and he’s so damned slow in these brackish waters near to the land, he can’t make it back to the deeps before the sun is well up.

So, so, so. It’s not a catastrophe, no matter what his uncle would say. He can keep his wits tuned sharp and his claws about him - and how often really do the other creatures bother us, anyway? he thinks. They try to hide from predators, or flee: not aggravate us.

So he’s making his way cautiously through the shallows, not wanting to end up beached and forced to shift forms. Being human might be  _necessary_  sometimes; it’s never  _pleasant_.

-And there is that noise again.

A thousand times louder, so he hisses and lashes out with nails and tail before remembering it’s not a threat but only sound - and now it comes with other noises.

Voices.

Humans.

He should have known. Everything pesky and frustrating and likely to be dangerously irrational is tied up with humans.

Burr tucks himself into a sort of alcove and watches.

It’s a ship. He knows that, though he’s never seen one from this angle.

The men are - what? Dipping things into the water and dragging them out again. The ship has a tall piece in the middle - several - and large pale things curved like bird-feathers attached somehow, and - and humans are so  _strange_.

Burr gets nearer without quite intending to. He creeps up close - raising his head out of the water to get away from that horrible noise of the ship dragging through the sea - and just as he does, he locks eyes with a human.

A man.

Neither one of them moves.

The man - the human - does not shout or call for harpoons or find a net - all of which Burr has been warned about. How many times has he seen his uncle’s scar, from a spear he took as a youth?  _This is what happens when you go to the shoreline._ And there are other stories. Mer-men and -maids who simply vanished. Lost to sharks, maybe. Or maybe not.

The man stares down into the water. His mouth is open and breathing hard, his eyes are huge and dark, he’s  _beautiful_  -

“Man overboard!” someone yells. Another human. There are so many, too many, and they gather together - looking over the side, tossing out a float, calling for help - as Burr goes down deep deep deeper into the colder waters along the ocean floor.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex meets Laurens! they share a Moment.

Alex shuts his eyes.

The sun is hot and certain and the wind whips his hair around his face and the salt-air is heavy in his mouth, and that's enough, it's enough, for now it is enough: he can pretend that he's home. The shouts and noise of the sailors are the dockworkers, and his mother --

No.

He jolts away from that thought. Raises his chin. Breathes in deeply. It's not home -- he'll never be home again -- he cannot face that -- but by god, there are other good things. He'll never get tired of water spraying lightly on his skin and the way the horizon curves at the edges, and --

"You're that Hamilton?"

Alex looks up at the voice -- looks away -- and looks again, through his lashes. Feels himself responding. His shoulders draw down and straighten.

 _Sailor,_ he thinks. He holds out a hand. "Yeah. Hamilton. Alexander."

The man's eyes are steady and dark grey and the sun's left freckles all over his face and down his neck and Alex thinks they go further, maybe they go all the way down -- and now he is beginning to throb.

"Firm handshake, lad. You're not signing on?"

"No. I disembark at Jamestown."

"Your first voyage?"

"Does it show?" says Alex, laughing, leaning back against the rail. "I came on from Nevis."

"The bright young star, aren't you? Wrote a poem? You don't look like that sort."

Alex flushes. _What sort do I look like,_ he wants to say, and _To tell the truth, I am._

The man laughs, but -- "Laurens," he says. "Jonathan Laurens. I'll be setting out again when she's stocked and watered" -- he means the ship - "But between times I live in Littlestown."

Wherever that is. "Mr Laurence, if --"

"Laurens."

Alex shifts, trying to hide his rising interest in the folds of the loose breeches. "If you go ashore and find you need a drink, I'd be glad to join you." It comes out sounding like a proposition. He blushes again, humiliatingly. "I mean --"

"I know what you mean," says Laurens. Maybe he does. His gaze openly lingers on Alex's mouth. "You're a young thing, aren't you?"

"Not so young as all that. And I'm eighteen." Probably. His mother was always vague on those minor details.

"Just a baby," says John Laurens: and he smiles.


	3. Chapter 3

There is no point in wondering about a human, thinking about them. Humans are strange. Often incomprehensible, says his uncle, and always trouble.

So Burr does not think about it. Him. The _man_.

Burr isn’t hungry anymore; the small human will take a while to digest - all those bones and hair, and the bits of clothes he didn’t bother to remove.

Still he moves slowly, at a hunting pace.

The taste still in his mouth is like the feeling in his belly, the wanting: and he cannot stop thinking of humans after all. The way he wanted that man with the dark hair and the dark eyes that looked like wanting, too ... His desire was like being hungry and like eating all together.

They had seen each other; they’d seen each other.

Only a moment.

He wants to go back. He wants to — what?

Return to warm shallow waters.

Sunlight.

And what else?

Impossible. Impossible.

So he keeps going deep. He is satiated enough, he is tired enough: he will sleep.

And tells himself that this wanting will be gone when he wakes.


	4. Chapter 4

He shouldnt be thinking like this about a human.

Burr swam against the dragging currents, further out and deeper than he was used to doing; he could go quite some time without breathing air, letting his gills take in oxygen, and he pressed that to its limits now. He let the tension in his chest replicate other hungers and held off, waited, until it was too much — he must surface or drown — and then he came above the waves with a gasp.

He was utterly alone. The ocean stretched out in every direction, featureless and mute. Even the rough blue edge of the land was gone, swallowed up. There was no one and nothing but himself.  
— at least, as far as life above the surface went. Fish were somewhere nearby; he had heard them arguing among themselves, like sparrows in a hedge. And like sparrows they kept well clear of the cat, traveling in a pack for companionship as well as safety.

They avoided Burr: but he wasn’t the only predator. Somewhere north was a shark, humming its solitary tune. Carnivorous fish, too, traveled around, muttering things he didn’t care about.

At the surface, Burr held his face up to the sky. He liked the sunlight and the changing weather and the way the ocean replicated changes and created them.

He wasn’t supposed to like those things. It wasn’t forbidden: only shameful.

Like wanting a human.

Like having to leave your people, having to be alone, to find the space to say to yourself: _I want him._

He didn’t like how that man had touched the boy. _Alex_.

Alex had liked it.

Burr didn’t. It wasn’t right. He should — he should —

He should do it and he would do it.

He took a deep breath and a last look at the sun — setting now between the waves — and dove down, scattering schools, setting for home.


End file.
